There is no reason to expect them to answer all moral questions that we can think of. — Mark S

It's going to have to say something about Trolley Car.

@Tom Storm, et al., what do you make of this:

The most reasonable foundation for morality is what morality is and always has been - the rules we live by to maintain cooperative societies. — Mark S

Has Mark presented a cogent argument for this contention? Is he right?

There is no reason to expect them to answer all moral questions that we can think of.
— Mark S

It's going to have to say something about Trolley Car. — RogueAI

There is no a priori reason that morality as cooperation must be able to help resolve the dilemmas posed in Tolleyology.

But Morality as Cooperation Strategies can explain some of its curious experimental results.

People commonly judge throwing a switch to sacrifice one person to save five as moral. But they judge it immoral to push a large man off a bridge (sacrificing one person) to block a trolley, saving five people. Why the difference when the body count is the same?

What triggers our moral sense to make different judgments? Pushing the large man off the bridge will reduce trust between people (if you stand next to someone they may kill you) and thereby reduce future cooperation. Throwing the switch does not reduce trust to the same extent.

People commonly judge throwing a switch to sacrifice one person to save five as moral. But they judge it immoral to push a large man off a bridge (sacrificing one person) to block a trolley, saving five people. Why the difference when the body count is the same? — Mark S

I wrote a paper on that once, many years ago, although the case I was looking at was Trolley Car vs abducting a person to harvest their organs and save five people. I think in the trolley car cases, we see that as a rare one-off, so we sacrifice the one, but in the other trolley-car like cases where we get our hands dirty (pushing a person, abducting a person), we can see how society could head down a scary path where it starts to actively look for ways to kill people for "the greater good".

Pushing the large man off the bridge will reduce trust between people (if you stand next to someone they may kill you) — Mark S

Or will it increase trust, in that those who comment on the event after the fact will see pushing the large man off the bridge as showing that you can be relied on to make difficult decisions, and as an exemplar of how one ought act?

Perhaps things are not so clear as you suppose.

Foot's Trolley problem was conceived as a way of showing some of the limitations of consequentialism. The trolley was to be contrasted with the case of killing a healthy person in order to harvest their organs to save five terminally ill patients. Same consequence, differing intuitions. (I see Rogue is aware of this).

Cooperation seems of little use here, in line with 's strategy of asking for explicit and practical examples of the use of a cooperation approach, in order to test it's utility.

Tom Storm, et al., what do you make of this:
The most reasonable foundation for morality is what morality is and always has been - the rules we live by to maintain cooperative societies.
— Mark S
Has Mark presented a cogent argument for this contention? Is he right? — Banno

I used to argue that morality was like traffic lights; a code of conduct to keep all of us safe. That's a perspective which misses some nuances. Why for instance should all of us care to follow a code? Similarly, why should we care to cooperate? And I still don't quite understand how cooperation is of itself moral.

Determining what is reasonable is also somewhat fraught I would have thought. It might be argued that it is reasonable to kill people with disabilities for the sake of the future genepool. I think Mark is putting up a valiant fight against the vagaries of morality in the current world. At some point this all boils down to worldviews and values - these are not always axiomatic to others.

Regarding the trolley problem: people generally do not want to be agents causing the death of others, even it is accidental and not at all their fault. If a child runs out in front of your car and you kill her this will probably be much more traumatic for most people than witnessing someone else run over a child. So, the more overt and obvious one's agency in causing the death of another, the more I think most people would wish to avoid it.

Switching a lever to kill one instead of the five that will otherwise be certainly killed is taking matters into one's own hands to a greater extent than doing nothing, because doing nothing is not being the active cause of anyone's death. Sure, you can argue that omitting to act is the same as committing an act, but I don't buy that argument. The trolley problem fails to take people's feelings, and the paralysis that they might cause in the critical moment, into account. Also, the idea that one persons' life is worth less than five people's lives is questionable if we are not convinced that a definite value can be put on a human life.

I think Mark is putting up a valiant fight against the vagaries of morality in the current world. — Tom Storm

Sure, and I'll add kudos for Mark's addressing moral issues at all - it's unfashionable to even frame discussions in ethical terms, so even addressing these issues shows some courage. One is expected to frame such issues in either legal or financial terms.

But there is a scientisitic feel to Mark's argument, the implicit - and at times explicit - derision of the historical and practical exegesis of ethics, as if it could all be replaced by Mark's extrapolation from evolutionary theory. Such a lack of depth.

If the fight against vagaries leads only to superficiality, then let's stay vague.

...or to paraphrase, moral issues tend to be intractable rather than vague; and hence to treat them as tractable... is to misconstrue or even misidentify what is at issue.

And yet we must act.

I wrote a paper on that once, many years ago, although the case I was looking at was Trolley Car vs abducting a person to harvest their organs and save five people. I think in the trolley car cases, we see that as a rare one-off, so we sacrifice the one, but in the other trolley-car like cases where we get our hands dirty (pushing a person, abducting a person), we can see how society could head down a scary path where it starts to actively look for ways to kill people for "the greater good". — RogueAI

Right, the case of abducting a person to harvest their organs and save five people is supported as moral by virtually no one even though the body count is the same. I see the Morality as Cooperation explanation as complementary and expanding on your explanation in that it explains why we "don't want to get our hands dirty" - those actions would decrease future trust and cooperation, a big concern for our moral sense.

Relevant to these cases, Morality as Cooperation applied as moral means for utilitarian ends - a kind of rule-utilitarianism - eliminates simple utilitarianism's common gotchas of conflicts with our moral sense. As far as answering the question "What is good?" one attractive answer is a kind of rule utilitarianism with Morality as Cooperation defining moral means (morality as cooperation defining the rule) and, in this case, the utilitarian goal being saving the five lives.

The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect

The origin of the tram, and much else besides, together with Ascombe's reply.

:up:

Does this lead us into a space that there is nothing intrinsically good or bad and that almost anything might be allowable under the right circumstances? — Tom Storm

Hummn… Quite the opposite. Exploitative moral norms create cooperation problems and therefore violate the function of morality – solving the cooperation/exploitation dilemma. There are a lot of good reasons for groups to decide to advocate and enforce cooperation strategies that do not exploit others – that are universally moral. I can’t imagine groups intentionally deciding to advocate and enforce cooperation strategies that exploit others. So “women must be submissive to men” and ‘homosexuality is evil” are ground ruled out.

Moral norms in general are oughts (what we feel we have an imperative obligation to do). But, as I have explained, that feeling of imperative oughts is an illusion encoded in our moral sense by our evolutionary history because it increased cooperation.— Mark S

Do you think this is a controversial statement? I see where you are coming from but many people who do not share your values could find this problematic. — Tom Storm

The science-based reasoning behind it seems solid – see the OP. I have heard no credible argument for how imperative obligations could exist. It appears at least highly likely that sound arguments for imperative obligations cannot be made.

I've found @Banno helpful on many subjects. He certainly reminds me that philosophy is not easy and to be wary of easy answers. He alerted me to virtue ethics when I first arrive here. Philosophy seems to be about continually refining the questions we are asking, which may matter as much as, if not more so, than the putative answers. — Tom Storm

I don’t doubt that Banno can provide this kind of a description of morality – it is all part of a tradition of endless questioning and uncertainty that began with Socrates. Science now offers an objective foundation for morality (morality as limited to cultural moral norms and our moral sense) that is fixed in objective science – and Banno is having trouble grasping that.

Of course, this science-based objective foundation does not answer all our questions about ethics. We can still have endless arguments about the non-objective parts of ethics. For example, science does not supply the wisdom of stoicism about how to live, or the wisdom of consequentialist thought about what is good. Banno could be an excellent resource on ethical wisdom from both virtue ethics and consequentialism.

I have been impressed with modern stoicism's ethical wisdom, which is way beyond anything science can provide. Massimo Pigliucci’s writings and the book How to be a Stoic are illuminating.

Pushing the large man off the bridge will reduce trust between people (if you stand next to someone they may kill you)
— Mark S

Or will it increase trust, in that those who comment on the event after the fact will see pushing the large man off the bridge as showing that you can be relied on to make difficult decisions, and as an exemplar of how one ought act?

Perhaps things are not so clear as you suppose.

Foot's Trolley problem was conceived as a way of showing some of the limitations of consequentialism. The trolley was to be contrasted with the case of killing a healthy person in order to harvest their organs to save five terminally ill patients. Same consequence, differing intuitions. (I see Rogue is aware of this).

Cooperation seems of little use here, in line with ↪RogueAI's strategy of asking for explicit and practical examples of the use of a cooperation approach, in order to test it's utility. — Banno

Empirical data shows that most people consider pushing the large man off the bridge immoral. If you think people are immoral, you will not trust them or want to cooperate with them.

But a minority of people (most being people who have taken philosophy courses) say pushing the large man off the bridge is moral. Any chance you have taken a philosophy course? They and you make unusual moral judgments. Why?

Judging that the act is moral is an example of "slow moral thinking" based on mechanical thought processes from a premise, here a utilitarian one.

Judgments that the act is immoral by most people are spontaneous, near-instantaneous, "fast moral thinking" directly from their moral sense - no rational thought is involved.

Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains fast moral thinking, not slow moral thinking.

Claiming science is, therefore, useless would be silly.
— Mark S

Of course, I've done no such thing. What I have done is simply point to the is/ought distinction, and warned against taking what humans have done as evidence for what they ought do. — Banno

If anyone cares to read what I actually said, the next part of my comment points out your incoherence in accepting science to be useful, but rejecting the science of morality as necessarily useless. Is this your way of saying that you now agree that that the science of morality’s explanation of morality as cooperation strategies could be culturally useful if the naturalistic fallacy is avoided (which is the case I have presented)? If so, at last progress.

You have not simply “warned against taking what humans have done as evidence for what they ought do”. In my posts, you have repetitively, insultingly, and, most of all, falsely implied my claims violated the naturalistic fallacy and were therefore nonsense.

Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains fast moral thinking, not slow moral thinking. — Mark S

I think your sense of what is an explanation of what is a bit unrealistic. I think the adaptiveness of fast moral thinking (considered within an evolutionary framework) is more accurate as an explanation for human moral thinking.

Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains fast moral thinking, not slow moral thinking.
— Mark S

I think your sense of what is an explanation of what is a bit unrealistic. I think the adaptiveness of fast moral thinking (considered within an evolutionary framework) is more accurate as an explanation for human moral thinking. — wonderer1

Yes, fast moral thinking (our spontaneous moral judgments) is an evolutionary adaptation. What morality as cooperation explains is what is encoded (cooperation strategies) in that evolutionary adaption.

So I am not understanding what you mean by "the adaptiveness of fast moral thinking (considered within an evolutionary framework) is more accurate as an explanation". Morality as Cooperation Strategies describes that adaptation. They are not separate things.

Do you have a different explanation of the content of the fast moral thinking adaptation?

Do you have a different explanation of the content of the fast moral thinking adaptation? — Mark S

Inasmuch as evolution might be said to have a 'purpose' that purpose is to produce individuals with a high probability of success in passing on their genes. When evolution is occuring in a species which gets a lot of benefit from social cooperation we can expect evolutionary changes that take advantage of that environmental niche of living as a member of a social species. However, it isn't realistic to think cooperation is the 'purpose' of that evolution. A relatively high level of cooperation is just a side effect of evolution in such an environmental niche.

Inasmuch as evolution might be said to have a 'purpose' that purpose is to produce individuals with a high probability of success in passing on their genes. When evolution is occuring in a species which gets a lot of benefit from social cooperation we can expect evolutionary changes that take advantage of that environmental niche of living as a member of a social species. However, it isn't realistic to think cooperation is the 'purpose' of that evolution. A relatively high level of cooperation is just a side effect of evolution in such an environmental niche. — wonderer1

First, none of my claims rely in any way on a supposed 'purpose' of evolution.

The science of morality shows 1) that cultural moral norms and the judgments made by our moral sense are best explained as parts of cooperation strategies and 2) that these strategies solve a cooperation/exploitation dilemma that is innate to our universe. This science is silent about purpose.

Also, remember that evolution is merely the process by which behaviors are encoded in our biology and cultural moral norms. Morality is consistent with what is encoded, cooperation strategies, not with the process that did the encoding - evolution. Evolution encodes immoral behavior just as readily as it encodes moral behavior. Evolution encodes whatever increases reproductive fitness in given circumstances.

Your error of confusing the process that is doing the encoding (evolution) with what is being encoded (cooperation strategies) is a common one, even among otherwise well-informed, careful philosophers such as Sharon Street in her moral debunking papers. Due to this error, she does not actually debunk morality's objective foundations (moral realism).

I guess I have a problem with your use of "strategy".

Whose strategy is it?

What's your essential perspective on moral 'foundations'? — Tom Storm

I believe that moral reasoning originates in the individual’s attempts to make sense of their experiences of social relations, and at the core of this is the aim to anticipate behavior. Guilt is a key element of moral feeling, and the personal construction of guilt involves the assessment that we are responsible for a breach of intimacy or trust with another person or group. Culturally normative standard of morality are abstractions derived from these personal assessments. The belief in universal moral foundations is one way to try to explain how individuals end up alienated from others, but it is a kind of approach that makes morality dependent on blame, finger-pointing, the notion of culpability and reprehensiveness. I think this is an inadequate way of understanding behavior thar deviates from our expectations. One can have a morality devoid of blame , culpability and punishment, a morality not aimed at achieving conformity to norms but instead an ‘audacious’ ought that helps us to reconstrue what we cannot deny.

I guess I have a problem with your use of "strategy".

Whose strategy is it? — wonderer1

Game theory shows that strategies such as direct and indirect reciprocity and kin altruism are as innate to our universe as the game theory mathematics they are based on.

However, long before the discoveries of game theory, people chanced across the parts of reciprocity strategies and kin altruism. These strategies solved the cooperation problems they faced and the benefits of cooperation they produced were the selection forces that encoded them in our moral sense and in our cultures. It was only after the discoveries of game theory that it became obvious that moral norms like the Golden Rule and "Do not lie, steal, or kill" were important moral norms because they advocated initiating reciprocity strategies.

:up:

"Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" are common parts of traditional moralism. Now I can explain why people thought they were moral but since they contradict morality's function of solving the cooperation/exploitation dilemma, I know they are immoral. — Mark S

Did you come from a religious background by any chance? You don’t see the link between your wrapping this narrative in the cloak of science and religious norms of conduct?

Failing to understand why people’s attempts to get along with others fall short of your standards can lead you in one of two directions. You can either experiment with your construction of the puzzling and seemingly ‘immoral’ behavior of a group or individual until you come up with a more effective way to understand why it represented the best moral thinking for therm at the time, or you can blame them for your inability to make sense of their actions , slap a label of immorality on it and try and knock some sense into them. One can do this just as easily within a scientific as a religious justification. Instead of blaming the evil intent of an autonomously free willing subject, we blame forces outside of the control of the person, either inner demons like biological drives, instincts, incentives, or we blame social forces.

Ten people can enthusiastically agree on the importance of cooperation and the need to avoid exploitation, and yet each of them will construe the sense of these concepts in different ways, and your universalistic template for cooperation flattens and conceals those different senses. As a result, the behavior of some of those ten people may very well appear immoral to you.

I didn't see an answer to my question in there.

Whose strategy is it? — wonderer1

I didn't see an answer to my question in there. — wonderer1

You could be more specific. But what I said summarizes all there is.

You don’t see the link between your wrapping this narrative in the cloak of science and religious norms of conduct?

Failing to understand why people’s attempts to get along with others fall short of your standards can lead you in one of two directions. You can either experiment with your construction of the puzzling and seemingly ‘immoral’ behavior of a group or individual until you come up with a more effective way to understand why it represented the best moral thinking for therm at the time, or you can blame them for your inability to make sense of their actions , slap a label of immorality on it and try and knock some sense into them. — Joshs

Descriptively moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies.
Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others.

Human morality is composed of strategies that solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma.

Behaviors that exploit others contradict the function of human morality and create cooperation problems.

Concluding that "Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" are immoral because they exploit others and create cooperation problems and thus contradict the function of morality has nothing to do with my background, the social environment these 'moral' norms were enforced in, or any other extraneous circumstances.

My claim of immorality for "Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" is based only on their innate exploitation contradicting the function of morality.

Are you arguing for some kind of moral relativism? Do you hold that "Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" are norms some societies can morally advocate and enforce or what?

I can make sense of why men would selfishly cooperate to impose moral norms such as "women must be submissive to men". That is easy to understand. But making sense of it in terms of why they did it has nothing to do with its morality.

You could be more specific. But what I said summarizes all there is. — Mark S

The problem with using "strategy" in this context is that it suggests that moralistic fast thinking on the part of humans is part of someone's conscious plan, when it is actually a result of unthinking evolutionary processes.

Thanks Joshs.

One can have a morality devoid of blame , culpability and punishment, a morality not aimed at achieving conformity to norms but instead an ‘audacious’ ought that helps us to reconstrue what we cannot deny. — Joshs

I'd be interested to see more details.

Are you arguing for some kind of moral relativism? Do you hold that "Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" are norms some societies can morally advocate and enforce or what?

I can make sense of why men would selfishly cooperate to impose moral norms such as "women must be submissive to men". That is easy to understand. But making sense of it in terms of why they did it has nothing to do with its morality. — Mark S

Oh yeah, I’m a super-duper moral relativist. Which doesn’t mean I don’t believe that there isnt some sort of progress in moral behavior. What it means is that I don’t think that moral progress should be thought of in terms of the yardstick of conformity to any universal norms, whether religious, social or biological in origin. “ Women must be submissive to men” and “Homosexuality is evil” are immoral to the same extent as Newtonian physics, Lamarckism biology or Skinnerian psychology are considered inadequate explanations of the empirical phenomena they attempt to organize in comparison with more recent theories.

I suggest that labeling behavior as selfish or lazy is precisely failing to make sense of another’s motives. It’s a substitute for doing due diligence in understanding how things seemed to the person at the same that they acted.